Sunday, April 16, 2006

CRAPPY EASTER!

Yeah, and if your names are ___ ______ and ____ ____, or even ___ _________ for that matter (take a WILD guess!) I hope the Easter Bunny left a nice steaming one in your basket! Anyhow, in case you aren't astute enough, you can betcha bottom food stamp that I ain't exactly in a happy mood even during these festive times when I should be doing cartwheels thinking about all the tasty candy that I'll be gobbling these next few days. I don't wanna go into the whys and wherefores of my bad mood (it'll only give more ammo to at least two of the three unmentionables listed above) but let me just tell you that I'm going to try and forego my rotten feelings for today and peck out a nice li'l ol' post telling all of you anxious beagles out there about some of the fun (and maybe not so) items that have crossed my path over the past week or so. Just don't expect me to be my usually jovial self (hah!), because right now I feel like heaving a whole batch of colorful hard boiled eggs at more than a few targets out there!

But really, if you think I'm having a rough go of it being a totally ignored and hated person on the lowest of the low rung of the blogosphere, you should just try being Dawn Eden! A gal introduced to me by none other than Lindsay Hutton thanks to his linking up of her Gene Pitney obit on his post (which in turn led me to a J. D. King caricature of her which certainly got my eyes lit!), I gotta say that I've been tuning in to see what Eden has been writing as of late about almost as much as I check out various other blogs to see what bad is being said about me (that's a joke, OK?)! Now personally, I really dunno what to make out about Eden's rock criticism...her musical values seem to be too much on the bland mainstream side for my own left (make that right)-field tastes (and besides that, she's also contributed to that Jim DeRogatis book which allegedly tears down the sacred rock LP icons of all time that I don't think anybody out there in the real world liked, although the fact that both of those wonderful rock critics Dave Marsh and Parke Puterbaugh heaved heavy dung-filled shovels at the thing speaks a lot more POSITIVELY about the book than anyone else could!), and her politics are more Bushian than Buchananista (take her support for the current goings on in Iraq and who knows, possibly Iran in the near future as well), but when it comes to societal/sexual mores or whatever they're called today Eden hits a bullseye that would make William Tell proud. And believe it or leave it, but I find her Dawn Patrol blog pretty good reading even if Miss Eden is ranting on about subject matters way above my third-grade edjamacation, though I must 'fess up to the fact that if anyone's getting burned up over the way all of those tres-"moderne" feminist types treat Dawn and her "reactionary" (read: anything that "keeps" women, minorities and gays down, or at least somebody said something like that about a certain you-know-who once!) opines it sure ain't Dawn...it's ME!!!!! I mean, if you think I've been through the grinder thanks to the various unmentionables above, you should see what Dawn goes through and on a daily basis as well! And although she probably would barf at the thought, I gotta admit that I do feel sorry when the lass is being PICKED ON like that! Yeah, reading what those dykes (at least in spirit!) hafta say about Dawn really gets my blood way past the 98.6-degree level, although I guess if a buncha hairy-pits who still read MS. can get so hot and bothered over one gal who can stand up against all of the evil lunacy that has "gone down" (calm down, Dave!) over the past few decades then I guess Dawn certainly is doing something right! And y'know what? I think I actually like the lass in my own gosh-it-all platonic way and she ain't even Japanese! Whaddaya say about THEM APPLES???

Before I get to the reg'lar portion of today's post tell me...izzit me or are some of the pix posted earlier this month (and late last) downright blurry??? I dunno what happened to cause that and I dunno what I can do to put them in focus if they are but please do let me know. Either the pics are outta-focuse or I may be having a stroke and I would like to know one way or the other!!!

Although Sonny Sharrock was NOT a member of this all-black jazz/rock band from the terminally hip college town of Silver Springs (boho hippie body-piercing capital of Ohio) who unleashed this album on us sometime in the very late-sixties or very-early-seventies, he does play on six of the seven tracks here and I could forgive you for thinking so because the heavy guy with the 'fro standing in the front on the cover does bear a slight resemblance to the guitarist of atonal reknown. And for an all-black rock group from Silver Springs of all places Brute Force is purty wild, or I guess as wild as alla those all-black bands that permeated the New York Scene in the eighties back when the Black Rock Coalition seemed to be at the peak of its powers. Even though this disque starts off with some pleasant but ineffectual jazz rock that owes more to the production of Herbie Mann than one would have hoped for, as the album progresses into such uncharted territory as the aptly named "Monster" and the fifteen-minute "Ye-Le-Wa" Brute Force end up sounding a lot like the best of what spiritual leader Pharoah Sanders had been putting out for us before he hit the rhumba highway. Beautiful scrunch here. I mean it.

Let's face it Clyde, nobody has come up with a halfway decent no wave sampler ever since NO NEW YORK started flying off the shelves back in 1978 thanks to a strategically-placed "PRODUCED BY ENO" sticker, and NEW YORK NOISE is no exception. It seems as if a lotta bozos out there get their no wave and post-punk and fluffy art projects all mixed up, which is why we have compilations like this which mostly mash up some post-disco and art-rock wannabes with the eighties post-no wave scene, some stragglers and oh yeah, TWO bonafide classic no wave number from Red Transistor and the Static amidst the slop. Sonic Youth from their first and best album are here, perhaps way outside the time limitations but better they than the Pulsallama or Arthur Russell dance rock stuff that had me heading straight for the arms of Miriam Linna around the time I began to realize that new wave 1976 and gnu wave 1982 weren't quite one and the same. And hey, I gotta admit that even Y-Pants, a band I dismissed upon the release of their CD collection a few years back sound OK next to some of the dance-y dross here but sheesh, what ever happened to the Gynecologists, Daily Life (the Static with Paul McMahon), the A-Band, Terminal and the Ghosts? I mean, I don't wanna hafta wait for some Smithsonian collection to be released on my 110th birthday, the same day I get a brand new plastic dung removal unit inserted upsides my way-worn (the NATURAL way) sphincter!

Les Rallizes Denudes-HEAVIER THAN A DEATH IN THE FAMILY; DOWN AND OUT IN TOKYO CD-Rs (no label)

With all the Denudes collections I have available at my fingertips I don't think any of these were really necessary. However, if you're unfamiliar with the band these are a good place to start. DEATH is a high energy cooker mostly dating from (I believe) the late-seventies, though the 10:32 "People Can Choose" comes from a 1973 gig done somewhere between Les Denudes' late-sixties garage psychedelia days and the mid-seventies hard sonic blare. In fact it kinda sounds Euro hardrock enough to have shown up on some early Skydog release! I'm unsure of TOKYO's time and place (and too lazy to find out...sinus headache is getting to me again!) but it's a good set, slightly slowed-down, laid back yet intense with an eerie creepy-crawl feeling to it as well as song titles in French which I'm sure would confuse a few more people who think this band originated in the land of wine and cheese. Well, considering how leader Takashi took not only a European name for his Asian wunderband but a Euro approach to playing American late-sixties hard rock innovation I can see how the confusion would reign...

Anthony Moore-PIECES FROM THE CLOUDLAND BALLROOM CD; REED, WHISTLE AND STICKS CD (both on Blueprint, available through Forced Exposure)

I was expecting some of that SORT OF-period Slapp Happy Velvets-rock here, but all I got were avant voice pieces and sound collages performed with the help of various Faust members amongst other passerbys! Interesting enough, though I bought these during one of my very frequent Velvet jags and was expecting something Richard Williams would have raved from here to Fredonia and back about in some now cruddy MELODY MAKER back in 1972. (And he might've raved about this one...I dunno, but I'm talking about raves as in rock's total eruption!) I think that I'll file mine next to Tony Conrad for those especially introverted moments. Now, can anyone tell me if those Anthony More records (like FLYING DOESN'T HELP) are worth seeking out or should I just stick with Peter Hammill if I wanna hear British prog rockers go proto-punk?

Anyway, thaz it for now...still have to get to the Mike Stax stack as well as some more Japanese wonders (LSD March and Up-Tight live) that have been laying about the abode, not to mention whatever else I can get my germ-riddled hands on, so expect all of that whenever it may be...but certainly not now!

13 comments:

Naturally, and there's even a non-Sharrock Mann album in which his (Sharrock's that is) classic "Blind Willie" is performed! I almost picked it up when I saw it in the used bin two decades back but declined figuring that even if that song was a Sharrock composition how good could it be in the hands of Mann?

brute force is purdy good indeed. but i gotta say if ya want a little more free wail mixed with the funk, two albums take you all the way out: Funky Donkey by the Luther Thomas Human Arts Ensemble, and Nation Time by Joe McPhee

Mister G, I'm way ahead of you regarding the Thomas/Human Arts Ensemble disque...in fact I pulled it outta my collection only last night while on a search for some hot jazz/funk sides! However, I will have to try out the McPhee one you mentioned one of these days!

Maybe it does, though in many ways it takes a lot more from the late days of the original (more or less) New York Scene than it does post-punk. I mean, I hear a lotta Theoretical Girls-styled no wave, early EPI-period Velvet Underground and late-seventies Max's Kansas City-bred stylings as well. In many ways they were a time-warped group with a late-seventies underground attitude on the cusp of a radically different movement.

I recommend Flying Doesn't Help. It's basically pop songs, not unlike Slapp Happy, with backing by Faust, so there's enough noise and abrasion to satisfy. World Service was kind of the same, but not so catchy tunes and without Faust, so more pedestrian. Secrets of the Blue Bag on the other hand, is more of that process music stuff of the early 70s, with an obnoxiousness factor somewhere between the endless silverware drawer clatter of Reed, Whistle, and Sticks and the droning chanting (think wordless "We Will Fall") of Pieces From the Cloudland Ballroom. This is more like more minimal Michael Nyman -- down to pure process. Anyway, this was all well before Mo(o)re started co-writing material with the Watered-down post-1987 Pink Floyd . . .

how do I find bands like Gynecologists, Daily Life (the Static with Paul McMahon), the A-Band, Terminal and the Ghosts? I have heard these bands mentioned before in interviews but can never seem to find their stuff. Does anyone have this stuff? signed,HARDCORPSE

does anyone have any recordings from Gynecologists, Daily Life (the Static with Paul McMahon), the A-Band, Terminal and the Ghosts? I've heard these bands mentioned in interviews but can never find a damn thing they've released. HELLP!THANKsMATT